As usual, her lyrics are wildly autobiographical, declaring only women should be in charge of their bodies; “I pay the price on top of everything, each month a bill each month a reckoning/And each seed that dies, I cry and I bleed, so you can’t tell me.” Finally, “The Pacifist’s Lament” make’s its point in a gentler fashion.

An elegiac melody is cushioned by splayed guitar notes, rippling keys, an ebb and flow horn section and a vampy rhythm that thwoks in ¾ time.

She also found time to collaborate with artists like Maceo Parker (formerly of James Brown’s JB’s), U. As the new millennium dawned, she released the double album Revelling/Reckoning, a chronicle of her marriage (and subsequent divorce) from the married man she had obsessed over in Dilate.

Based out of Ani’s hometown, Buffalo, Righteous Babe had become a formidable indie.

Ani and Mike welcomed their daughter, Petah, at the beginning of 2007. Surveying this country’s divisive climate she is anxious but eloquent; “In the blue glow of gizmos lurk despots in diapers, and cyborgs with bull horns and crackpots and snipers/Like robots so cold with such ease they dismiss you, sooner fuck you than kiss you, sooner kick you and diss you.” Finally she asks “Where are my brothers, where are my sisters, where are my family who take care of each other?

Soon after, she was busking on street corners and playing in bars, chaperoned by Mike.

Magazine, and graced the covers of Spin and Musician.

Major labels attempted to woo Ani, but she preferred the freedom (and higher profit margin) that Righteous Babe afforded her.

With her shaved head, tattoos and piercings, she was a target for rednecks and bigoted cops, (a topic she fully documents in the song “Every State Line”), but she persevered.

Her music was a sui generis combination of Punk and Folk.

As her fan base grew, she was inundated with requests for tapes of her songs.